German Question Thread: Fragen über Deutsch

[Iyionaku]

Zumindest bei -ern weiß ich, dass die meisten dieser Wörter im Alt- oder Mittelhochdeutschen noch auf -eren (oder ähnlichen) endeten und der zweite Vokal zwischen r/l und n weggefallen ist. (mhd. wanderen > wandern, ahd. zitterōn > mhd. zitern > zittern, ahd. sloten > mhd. slotern > schlottern). Bei den Verben auf -eln verhält es sich ähnlich (ahd. scutilōn < mhd. schüteln < schütteln, ahd. wantalōn > mhd. wandeln > wandeln). Wörter auf -eren und -elen und (so weit ich das erkennen kann) -arōn und -alōn veränderten sich also im Infinitiv.

Aber auch neu gebildete Wörter enden automatisch auf -ern oder -eln, wie man beispielsweise an tackern (von Tacker) sehen kann. Die Konjugation (zumindest schwacher Verben) ändert sich jedoch nicht, sie ist genauso wie wenn die Endung noch -eren oder -elen wäre, ich würde also sagen, dass es nur der besseren Aussprache diente.

Bei solchen Fragen empfehle ich übrigens die Onlinepräsenz des duden http://www.duden.de
Ich hoffe, ich konnte helfen.

[Alomar]

My question'll be in English so I make sure I ask it right:

How often does biological gender override grammatical gender when using a pronoun?
E.g. Ich habe es gekauft. instead of Ich habe ihn gekauft. for den Stuhl

And on a (maybe) related note:
How frequently are the "der" words used instead of the pronouns?
Of the flavor: Ich habe den gekauft. for Ich habe ihn gekauft.
Are they more literary or are they 'emphatic'? And if they are emphatic, what governs that 'emphasis'?


Oh, the things they never teach you in a classroom!

[Iyionaku]

My question'll be in English so I make sure I ask it right:

How often does biological gender override grammatical gender when using a pronoun?
E.g. Ich habe es gekauft. instead of Ich habe ihn gekauft. for den Stuhl

Never.
Really, I have never said something like that, or heard someone saying this. I don't know, maybe one says this in Middle or Low German, but in my environment, really, I've never met this. (In fact, Ich habe ihn gekauft is also very seldom. But that relates to your second question.)

[quote="Alomar]
And on a (maybe) related note:
How frequently are the "der" words used instead of the pronouns?
Of the flavor: Ich habe den gekauft. for Ich habe ihn gekauft.
Are they more literary or are they 'emphatic'? And if they are emphatic, what governs that 'emphasis'?

Oh, the things they never teach you in a classroom![/quote]

That is very usual.
Although "Den hab ich gekauft" is the more usual way (in sentences like "Erinnerst du dich noch an den Stuhl, den ich dir gezeigt habe? Den hab ich jetzt gekauft!). You use them mostly when you start to talk about someone (in colloquial speech). Although, when I really imagine, at least if I talk about a person, I never use er/sie in favor of der/die.
Duden defines der/die/das in those cases as "demonstrative pronoun"; and thats what it really does, in fact. It's not really empathic, it's just a stronger way of expressing the 3rd person pronouns.

Example:

Hast du gehört, was die sich letztens wieder gekauft hat? Ganz ehrlich, die übertreibt völlig.
AUX-2SG 2SG hear-PARTII what 3SG.FEM.DEM REFL-3SG lately PARTICLE buy-PART AUX-3SG? INTERJECTION, 3SG.FEM.DEM exaggerate-3SG overall.
Did you hear, what she bought herself lately? Really, she's exaggerating.

Hope I could help you (and hope that my last English sentence is right )

[cedh]

My question'll be in English so I make sure I ask it right:

How often does biological gender override grammatical gender when using a pronoun?
E.g. Ich habe es gekauft. instead of Ich habe ihn gekauft. for den Stuhl

Never.
Really, I have never said something like that, or heard someone saying this. I don't know, maybe one says this in Middle or Low German, but in my environment, really, I've never met this. (In fact, Ich habe ihn gekauft is also very seldom. But that relates to your second question.)

You may sometimes see biological gender override grammatical gender when talking about people though, mostly across sentence boundaries:

Ich habe gestern abend ein Mädchen kennengelernt. Die war sehr nett.
1SG.NOM AUX.1SG yesterday evening INDEF.ACC.NEUT girl get.to.know.PARTII | 3SG.FEM.DEM.NOM be.PAST very nice

[HinGambleGoth]

I cant write German, so I will write in English.

How much of modern German umlaut are actual old high German i-umlauts? from what I can tell, there is a lot of analogy going on.

haus = häuse, there was never any -iz ending there, i geuss it has picked it up from maus?, which has umlaut in all other modern Germanic languages.

It also seems like the plural ending -e, has spread a lot, many cognates in Swedish, particularly neuter ones, lack plural endings altogether, while German has put a schwa there, when did the unstressed vowels merge?

Why is it that the dative adjective ending still has -em but not the nouns?

[shimobaatar]

I'm pretty tired at the moment, and I want to make sure I ask the right thing, so I'm asking this in English. Sorry.

This is more of a question about the CBB's German subsection than about the German language itself. I avoided this subsection for a while since I thought it was entirely for native speakers only, but I've recently noticed that doesn't seem to be the case. I'd love to be able to keep myself from forgetting German by posting here, but I don't want to accidentally intrude on any threads for native speakers only. I'm sure that some native speakers of English can be pretty annoying sometimes to the rest of the world, and I'd hate to be one of those people. So, are there any areas/threads in this sub-board that are reserved for native speakers of German only?

[Creyeditor]

I don't think it matters where your from in any of this threads. However, if you want to write in any other thread than this, you should use German. If you just want to practice you can post something in the Rumhängethread. When writing in the other threads, keep in mind you are on topic. See here and here.

[shimobaatar]

However, if you want to write in any other thread than this, you should use German.

When writing in the other threads, keep in mind you are on topic.

Ja, natürlich. Entschuldigung.

Rumhängethread

Was bedeutet "Rumhänge"? Und welchem *Genus/Geschlecht(?) gehört das Lehnwort "Thread"?

*Wie sagt man "(grammatical) gender" auf Deutsch?

[Egerius]

However, if you want to write in any other thread than this, you should use German.

When writing in the other threads, keep in mind you are on topic.

Ja, natürlich. Entschuldigung.

Rumhängethread

Was bedeutet "Rumhänge"? Und zu welchem *Genus/Geschlecht(?) gehört das Lehnwort "Thread"?

*Wie sagt man "(grammatical) gender" auf Deutsch?

Thread ist männlich. Das grammatische Geschlecht ist in englischen Lehnwörtern manchmal schwer zu bestimmen.
grammatisches Geschlecht (n.) - grammatical gender

[Iyionaku]

Rumhängen - when you just chill around somewhere to pastime. Best translation: to hang out

Example sentence:

"Im Urlaub wollen sie nichts weiter als ein bisschen Spaß haben und zusammen rumhängen."
In their holidays they want no more than having fun and hanging out together.

[shimobaatar]

Rumhängen - when you just chill around somewhere to pastime. Best translation: to hang out

Example sentence:

"Im Urlaub wollen sie nichts weiter als ein bisschen Spaß haben und zusammen rumhängen."
In their holidays they want no more than having fun and hanging out together.

Soll man sagen "Er rumhängt" oder "Er hängt rum"?

[cedh]

Rumhängen - when you just chill around somewhere to pastime. Best translation: to hang out

Example sentence:

"Im Urlaub wollen sie nichts weiter als ein bisschen Spaß haben und zusammen rumhängen."
In their holidays they want no more than having fun and hanging out together.

Soll man sagen "Er rumhängt" oder "Er hängt rum"?

"Er hängt rum". Das rum ist ein abtrennbares Morphem, das etymologisch mit dem Adverb herum 'around' zusammenhängt. (Schriftlich würde man auch eher das nicht abgekürzte "er hängt herum" verwenden.)

[Iyionaku]

You separate the prefix if it holds the main stress, and keep the verb together if not.

rumhängen [ˈʁʊmˌhɛŋən] - er hängt rum but
verändern [fɐˈɛndɐn] - er verändert

[shimobaatar]

"Er hängt rum". Das rum ist ein abtrennbares Morphem, das etymologisch mit dem Adverb herum 'around' zusammenhängt. (Schriftlich würde man auch eher das nicht abgekürzte "er hängt herum" verwenden.)

Danke, das ist sehr interessant!

Was ist der Unterschied zwischen "verwenden" und "benutzen"?

You separate the prefix if it holds the main stress, and keep the verb together if not.

rumhängen [ˈʁʊmˌhɛŋən] - er hängt rum but
verändern [fɐˈɛndɐn] - er verändert

Danke, ich habe das nie vor gehört. Ich dachte, dass es einfach einige Präfixe, die trennbar waren, und einige Präfixe, die nicht trennbar waren, gegeben hat. (Sind diese Sätze richtig? Die deutsche Wortstellung kann verwirrend sein, meiner Meinung nach.)

Was ist der Unterschied zwischen "trennbar" und "abtrennbar"? Ist "Präfix" das richtige Wort?

---

Edit:

Soll man sagen "Er rumhängt" oder "Er hängt rum"?

Dieser Satz soll "Soll man "Er rumhängt" oder "Er hängt rum" sagen?", nicht "Soll man sagen "Er rumhängt" oder "Er hängt rum"?" sein, nicht wahr?

[Shemtov]

I'm interested in the mutually comprehensibility between Deutsch and Yiddish. How much of the following song do Deutsch-speakers understand? (stop before 2:30, because then they translate the song into English):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbhqFZTK1tY

[Adarain]

I'm interested in the mutually comprehensibility between Deutsch and Yiddish. How much of the following song do Deutsch-speakers understand? (stop before 2:30, because then they translate the song into English):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbhqFZTK1tY

Not a lot, but thanks to my english knowledge I was still able to decipher what “This video is not available” means.

[Shemtov]

Maybe this video will work (but if you know Spanish it has subtitles in that language):
https://www.youtube.com/v/7b9zp9L_9S8

[Adarain]

I can understand a lot, but not everything. Some words are probably hebrew loans, but everything germanic was perfectly understandable after I heard it for the second time. Judging from this, I wouldn’t have a lot of trouble speaking with a Jiddish speaker.

[Egerius]

My first impression of Yiddish was "looks like the German my grandparents speak - without the Hebrew loans".

[ixals]

It was quite easy too understand except for the Hebrew loans as Adarain said. The hardest thing was this "noh al tishkojeinu" part for me. I understood more than I thought I would!